‘The increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind’

‘Children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science’

Washington, DC —
Award-winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer declared
man-made global warming fears “mistaken” and noted that the Earth was
currently in a “CO2 famine now.”Happer,
who has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, made his
remarks during today’s Environment and Public Works Full Committee
Hearing entitled “Update on the Latest Global Warming Science.”“Many people don’t realize
that over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost
never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene
(geologic epoch) – 280 (parts per million - ppm) – that’s unheard of.
Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1000 (ppm) and it’s
been quite higher than that,” Happer told the Senate Committee. To read Happer’s complete opening statement click here:[Also: SeeInhofe Warns of Costs of Massive $6.7 Trillion 'Climate Bailout' & 'Consensus' in Collapse: Japanese scientists make 'dramatic break' with UN hypothesis of man-made warming!(UK Register)& $ave the Planet? 'Four climate lobbyists for every member of Congress' – Number of Lobbyists Up 300% & The Year of the Man-made Global Warming Skeptic ] “Earth was just fine in
those times,” Happer added. “The oceans were fine, plants grew, animals
grew fine. So it’s baffling to me that we’re so frightened of getting
nowhere close to where we started,” Happer explained. Happer also noted
that “the number of [skeptical scientists] with the courage to speak out
is growing” and he warned “children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science.” [In December, Happer requested to be added to the groundbreaking U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims ]Happer was pressed by the
Committee on whether rising CO2 fears are valid. “I don’t think the laws
of nature or physics and chemistry has changed in 80 million years. 80
million years ago the Earth was a very prosperous palace and there is no
reason to suddenly think it will become bad now,” Happer added. Happer is a professor in the Department of Physics at Princeton Universityand
former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from
1990 to 1993, has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow
of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences. Happer
was reportedlyfired by former Vice President Al Gorein 1993 for failing to adhere to Gore’s scientific views.“I believe that the increase
of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind,” Happer
told the Committee. “What about the frightening consequences of
increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about?In a
word, they are wildly exaggerated, just as the purported benefits of
prohibition were wildly exaggerated,” he explained. “At least 90% of
greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a
bit player,” he added. “But the climate is warming and CO2 is increasing.Doesn’t
this prove that CO2 is causing global warming through the greenhouse
effect? No, the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of
the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of
CO2.There have been similar and even larger warmings
several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age.
These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of
fossil fuels. The current warming also seems to be due mostly to natural
causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide.Over
the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a
slight cooling. This is not at all what was predicted by the IPCC
models,” Happer testified. [Note: See: An abundance of peer-reviewed studies continue to debunk rising CO2 fears ] “The existence of climate
variability in the past has long been an embarrassment to those who
claim that all climate change is due to man and that man can control it.
When I was a schoolboy, my textbooks on earth science showed a
prominent ‘medieval warm period’ at the time the Vikings settled
Greenland, followed by a vicious ‘little ice age’ that drove them out.So
I was very surprised when I first saw the celebrated ‘hockey stick
curve,’ in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. I could hardly
believe my eyes. Both the little ice age and the Medieval Warm Period
were gone, and the newly revised temperature of the world since the year
1000 had suddenly become absolutely flat until the last hundred years
when it shot up like the blade on a hockey stick. This was far from an
obscure detail, and the hockey stick was trumpeted around the world as
evidence that the end was near. We now know that the hockey stick has
nothing to do with reality but was the result of incorrect handling of
proxy temperature records and incorrect statistical analysis.There
really was a little ice age and there really was a medieval warm period
that was as warm or warmer than today,” Happer continued. “The whole hockey-stick episode reminds me of the motto of Orwell’s Ministry of Information in the novel 1984:
‘He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the
past, controls the future.’ The IPCC has made no serious attempt to
model the natural variations of the earth’s temperature in the past.
Whatever caused these large past variations, it was not due to people
burning coal and oil.If you can’t model the past, where you know the answer pretty well, how can you model the future?” he stated. “I keep hearing about the
‘pollutant CO2,’ or about ‘poisoning the atmosphere’ with CO2, or about
minimizing our ‘carbon footprint.’This brings to mind
another Orwellian pronouncement that is worth pondering: ‘But if thought
corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’ CO2 is not a
pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English
language by depriving ‘pollutant’ and ‘poison’ of their original
meaning. Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2.That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration.CO2
is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse
operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth
rate of their plants. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved
when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were about 1000 ppm, a level that we
will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our
current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our U.S.
Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time
current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even
higher levels.” More selected Happer excerpts: “I do not think there is a
consensus about an impending climate crisis. I personally certainly
don’t believe we are facing a crisis unless we create one for ourselves,
as Benjamin Rush did by bleeding his patients. Many others, wiser than I
am, share my view.The number of those with the courage to speak out is growing.There
may be an illusion of consensus. Like the temperance movement one
hundred years ago the climate-catastrophe movement has enlisted the mass
media, the leadership of scientific societies, the trustees of
charitable foundations, and many other influential people to their
cause.Just as editorials used to fulminate about the
slippery path to hell behind the tavern door, hysterical op-ed’s lecture
us today about the impending end of the planet and the need to stop
climate change with bold political action. Many distinguished scientific
journals now have editors who further the agenda of climate-change
alarmism. Research papers with scientific findings contrary to the dogma
of climate calamity are rejected by reviewers, many of whom fear that
their research funding will be cut if any doubt is cast on the coming
climate catastrophe. Speaking of the Romans, then invading Scotland in
the year 83, the great Scottish chieftain Calgacus is quoted as saying
“They make a desert and call it peace.”If you have the
power to stifle dissent, you can indeed create the illusion of peace or
consensus. The Romans have made impressive inroads into climate science.
Certainly, it is a bit unnerving to read statements of Dr. James Hansen
in the Congressional Record that climate skeptics are guilty of “high
crimes against humanity and nature.” Even elementary school
teachers and writers of children’s books are enlisted to terrify our
children and to promote the idea of impending climate doom.Having
observed the education of many children, including my own, I am not
sure how effective the effort will be. Many children seem to do just the
opposite of what they are taught. Nevertheless, children should not be
force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science. Many of you may know that
in 2007 a British Court ruled that if Al Gore’s book, “An Inconvenient
Truth,”was used in public schools, the children had to be
told of eleven particularly troubling inaccuracies. You can easily find
a list of the inaccuracies on the internet, but I will mention one.The
court ruled that it was not possible to attribute hurricane Katrina to
CO2. Indeed, had we taken a few of the many billions of dollars we have
been spending on climate change research and propaganda and fixed the
dykes and pumps around the New Orleans, most of the damage from
Hurricane Katrina could have been avoided.

Princeton Physicist Dr. Will Happer refutes
claims that global warming is causing record cold: ‘Polar vortices have
been around forever. They have almost nothing to do with more CO2 in the
atmosphere’

Award-winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer rejected the media and some scientists
claims that the record U.S. cold is due to man-made global warming.
Happer, explained the science in an exclusive interview with Climate
Depot.

“Polar vortices have been around forever. They have almost nothing
to do with more CO2 in the atmosphere,” Happer said in an exclusive
interview with Climate Depot.

Happer continued: “Here is a thumbnail sketch of the physics. The
poles have little sunshine even in summer, but especially in winter,
like now in the Arctic. So the air over the poles rapidly gets
bitterly cold because of radiation to dark space, with negligible
replenishment of heat from sunlight. The sinking cold air is replaced
by warmer air flowing in from the south at high altitudes. Since the
earth is rotating, the air flowing in from the south has to start
rotating faster to the west, just like a figure skater rotates faster if
she pulls in her arms. This forms the polar vortex. The extremely cold
air at the bottom of the vortex can be carried south by meanders of the
jet stream at the edge of the vortex. We will have to live with polar
vortices as long as the sun shines and the earth rotates.

Like any fluid system at “high Reynolds number,” the jet stream is
highly unstable, and from time to time it develops meanders to low
latitudes, like the one we have had the past few days. About this time
of year in 1777, just before the Battle of Princeton, there was a
similar sequence. On January 2, Cornwallis’s men marched south from New
York City through cold rain and muddy roads to try to trap George
Washington and his little Continental Army in Trenton . On the night of
January 2-3, a polar vortex swept across New Jersey, with snow and a
very hard freeze. Aided by the extremely cold weather, Washington was
able to evacuate his troops and artillery over newly frozen roads and
to avoid Cornwallis’s encirclement. Reaching Princeton on the viciously
cold morning of January 3, Washington won another battle against the
British and escaped to winter quarters in Morristown. Thank you polar
vortex!